


All In a Night's Work

by matrixrefugee



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen, Victorian Attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 12:43:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18604759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matrixrefugee/pseuds/matrixrefugee
Summary: Some of Jack's jobs have more interesting twists than others. This is one of the literally messier ones.





	All In a Night's Work

**Author's Note:**

> Written for < lj user="comment_fic">'s [Author's Choice, Author's Choice, And you have cabbage on your head because...?](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/291731.html?thread=54415251). Set in a Victorian era Torchwood, featuring Alice Guppy and Emily Holroyd, as well as a rumpled Jack Harkness.

"Mister Harkness, would you be so kind as to explain to me *why* there are leaves of cabbage adhering to your head and garments?" Miss Alice Guppy said, gazing up at Torchwood's primary field agent, as he stood across from her, Miss Guppy's writing desk between them. Her second in command, Miss Emily Holroyd, stood at her side, trying in vain to keep a straight face.

Despite the shriveled cabbage leaves and other bits of detrius that clung to his hair and mantled greatcoat, Mister Harkness maintained his usual cheek, darting a look at Miss Holroyd and dropping a wink at her before returning his attention to Miss Guppy. "In a few words: I fell in a rubbish heap."

"And how did you come to fall into a rubbish heap?" Miss Guppy asked.

"It's what happens when you have to make a daring escape off a rooftop, and you're not in the mood for going splat on the cobblestones below," Mister Harkness replied.

He was not making this debriefing so simple, and his noted habit of coloring the facts (though sometimes, given the manner of things with which their company dealt on a regular basis, along with the manner of scrapes to which the good captain seemed prone, the kind of brush needed to delineate the facts was a broad one) would add to the need for patience. "And why were you running across a rooftop?"

"Because I didn't want to be absorbed by the Abzorbaloff," Harkness replied, his tone rather snippy.

"The -- I beg your pardon?" He had to have invented that name.

"Abzorbaloff. Big, ugly, green-skinned thing from the planet Clom," Harkness related. "Absorbs anything with a pulse that comes within arm's reach."

"And that is what has been stealing people's livestock?" Miss Guppy asked.

"Oh yeah, though it won't be doing that any more," Harkness said, with a note of relief.

"I thought that you had said that you had had to make your escape by leaping into a rubbish heap?" Miss Guppy asked, wondering if there was a hole in the man's narrative.

"I did, but the thing jumped after me. Wasn't so lucky with with the cobblestones, though. Stunned himself, broke his limitation device and last time I saw him, he'd turned into a puddle of green goop."

Miss Guppy raised an eyebrow at this. "And what of your habit of letting alien creatures free if they are causing no commotion, or bringing them in for questioning if they are?"

Mister Harkness sighed. "It's an Abzorbaloff. It absorbs animals and people. Not something you really want running around, and I wasn't about to let it absorb *me*. Not sure I want to spend eternity with my head sticking out of that thing's gut."

Miss Holroyd made a pained sound of sympathy. Miss Guppy darted a look at her. "Permission to get de-cabbaged? Startin' to smell a little rancid here," Harkness asked, glancing down at himself.

"You may be excused," Miss Guppy said. The man's departure would give her a moment to speak with her second in command in privacy.


End file.
